Owen Sheers
A non-fiction narrative set in Zimbabwe following the travels of Sheers' great-great-uncle, Arthur Shearly Cripps, it won the Wales Book of the Year in 2005, and was also shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature's Ondaatje Prize.Unicorns, almost, his one-man play based on the life and poetry of the WWII poet Keith Douglas, was developed by the Old Vic, New Voices, and performed by Joseph Fiennes.While working as a tiler in the South Wales valleys one summer, Sheers had heard about the Auxiliary Units-secret civilian networks that, in the event of an invasion, would have formed a British resistance, but the novel focuses not on fighting "but on the uneasy means of survival open to the women who are left behind".In 2009, he published the novella White Ravens, a contemporary response to the myth of Branwen Daughter of Llyr, written as part of Seren's series of New Stories from the Mabinogion."In Sheers's Neath-flavoured take on the Bible, The Last Supper became pork pies and beer at the Social Club (with music from the Manic Street Preachers), while the Garden of Gethsemane was a scrubby patch of grass on a council estate. "[4] In January 2012, Sheers wrote The Two Worlds of Charlie F, a play based on the experiences of wounded soldiers, many of whom also made up the cast of the production, directed by Stephen Rayne and performed at the Theatre Royal Haymarket.His verse drama Pink Mist was first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and presents an elegy about camaraderie and loss in modern warfare as seen through the stories of serving soldiers in Afghanistan and their families.